Davus sat, pen in hand, looking out at the bleakness before him. Fear knotted his stomach, but the company he had found and the fire before him was a grateful salvation against the howls and strange voices upon the air. Unstoppering the ink well, he dipped the nib in, and began to scrawl.
Thick fog lies about, like a blanket from the comfort of the oncoming stars,
Their shine a distant memory, their light as far away as the Second Age to the Third.
Howls shake the spirit, carried upon the thick air, biting at any courage left within the quivering body,
Fell voices float across from unknown directions, beckoning anyone that hears to follow away from the safety of the withering fire.
The flames threaten to fade with every flit of the wind, licking and cowing the flames into submission, willing darkness to consume everything in sight,
Perhaps the only salvation of an inexorable fate, desperate to keep burning until the relief charge of the dawn.
Fear makes the bones shiver more than the cold, and ancient bones stir all around form within the mounds,
What evil must there have been? That those long dead still feel the desire to stand vigilant over their sacred ground.
Travellers are trespassers here. Fools enough to wander where they are not welcomed. Perhaps they will wander no more, should the fire wither and die, leaving those beside it exposed to the cold, and more.
The howls still do not cease. Like a hurricane biting at the cliffs, endlessly battering the sand of the soul until it withers into nothing,
In the end, the endless weather always erodes the strongest of soils.
Perhaps the moon has now passed its peak in the sky. Every second brings safety closer, though the red eyes that flicker further away, and the voice that rattles in the mind begs to differ.
Two peaks of stone, like a strange gateway, though it is long from the northern passage through the hills to Bree. How the simplest of curiosities should be suppressed, when they lead the traveller to explore lands such as these.
We can only pray for dawn. For the fog to clear. For the chill and the howls and the voices to cease.
I dare not follow them. For if this fire is extinguished before the morning, I fear so will I.
Only a fool would walk these barrows. The fool, this night, is I.
- inspired by sitting at the camp before the Great Barrow in-game whilst listening to the Fellowship of the Ring audio book during a long drive -
